Up and Down Wall Street

Ben Bernanke's Rotten Week

Markets slide after latest monetary announcement, and president says the Fed chief has outstayed his welcome.

If you had a rotten week—and if you own financial assets of nearly any stripe, you did—you probably still did better than Ben Bernanke, who had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week.

Losing money is one thing. But consider being told in a television interview by the person who nominated you for your job—the president of the United States, no less—that you had stayed on that job longer than you were supposed to. Even though your gig is up in a little over seven months, you'd likely want to make the decision, and the...